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North and South

In two weeks time our family holiday will take us to the south of Spain, to the region of Andalusia – not be confused with the fictional place Andalasia in the movie Enchanted.

We’ll be there for 15 days and have just been going over our itinerary that Mr Esther has already been preparing…

… and we came to the conclusion that we need to book some entry tickets in advance, like for the Cathedral in Seville that we want to visit and for the Alhambra in Granada. Every time The Alhambra is mentioned, I have this little line playing over and over in my head from North & South, when Fanny Thornton says “Ever since I read The Tales OF the Alhambra…” I love this scene, by the way, cracks me up every time and Jo Joyner is absolutely brilliant in it!

Anyway, our Alhambra entry tickets are booked and we were lucky, they were the last tickets available on the day that we plan to go! Now, I wonder, does anyone know whether “The Tales of the Alhambra” are worth a read or whether maybe a selection of the top 5 tales will do and what those 5 tales could be? It’s nice to have that little North & South connection while we’re there. We won’t be going to Cadiz, where Margaret’s brother went to live, that’s a bit too far off from where we are staying, so that N&S connection will have to wait for a later time. 🙂

Oh, and when I speak of North & South I just have to also share these gifs…

Richard Armitage as John and Daniela Denby-Ashe as Margaret are still magic together, even now, 15 years after this was made…

Like this:

So, this blog post by Guylty inspired me to collect some of my own fave in-character photos of Richard Armitage. No screencaps, just photos, and only one per character. This means that I have just spent a lovely 90 minutes or so going through my own saved pictures and pictures on Ali’s excellent Richard Armitage site (that alas seems mostly dormant now).

So, my Richard Armitage fascination started 13 (!!) years ago, when Richard played John Thornton in North & South:

To this day John Thornton remains an absolute favourite character of mine that Richard has portrayed.

Next up: Harry Kennedy in The Vicar of Dibley. This picture together with Dawn French as Geraldine Granger just makes me feel all kinds of warm and fuzzy inside – that huge smile and that profile! Sigh…

I was never a huge Guy of Gisborne fan, even though Richard was quite magnetic in this Robin Hood adaptation. This following photo of Richard as Guy is heartstopping, though. I’m a sucker for an instense Richard profile picture.

Lucas North in Spooks is next. Again, not a favourite but this picture makes me think he could be sitting right next to me at work, and what a joy that would be, right?

Strike Back, with Richard as John Porter, was a character I did enjoy. It was a little tough picking a favourite photo, but I settled on this one. I’d let him drive me anywhere…

Richard as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit was another high point for me! I love this picture…

And I have to add one more. For the premiere of the final installment, The Battle of the Five Armies in 2014, you could tweet to a certain account and receive an automated digital signed autograph card with your name on it in return. That was a great picture too that I just can’t resist sharing:

Next up is Gary in Into the Storm. Again, not a movie I like very much, but Rich did have a sympathetic role in it (albeit with a bit of a cringey US accent) and was easy on the eyes:

And then came another Richard masterpiece: he played John Proctor in The Crucible. My absolute fave photo from that is this following one. I also have it as a poster, it’s an image I can just stare at indefinitely and never get enough of:

I also very much like this picture of Richard as Bernhard Hare in Urban and the Shed Crew. I was lucky to see it last year at the Newcastle Film Festival, but when will it finally be released on DVD? Candida Brady tweeted this picture some years ago, there is something very endearing about this image…

When I think of Richard as Francis Dolarhyde in Hannibal, I shudder. He portrayed him absolutely brilliantly but it’s not a role I can revisit, this horror genre is just not my thing. However much I disliked the character, Richard was able to make me feel sorry for Francis to a certain extent, something that I had completely not expected. He showed a new versatility in this role and he used his body so beautifully, right down to his hands…

Moving on to Brain on Fire, there was one photo that absolutely warmed my heart – Richard as daddy Tom Cahalan:

This one from Pilgrimage with Richard as Raymond de Merville is really nice too. I liked his look in this movie, it’s such a pity the man he portrayed was so evil:

The final one I’m sharing is one of Richard as Daniel Miller in Berlin Station, season 2. Not a great series by any means, but this picture just somehow grabs me. Again, I think it’s the way he holds his body, combined with that intense look. So nice!

So, that’s it! My fave Richard in-character photos that aren’t screenshots. I tend to have a soft spot for profile pictures, also very much noticeable in this selection. 🙂 Anyone else want to join in? I wouldn’t mind seeing more pictures and other people’s choices… And thanks Guylty for this very enjoyable Richarding-evening!

While researching this, I came to the conclusion that I like Richard to look grungy and scruffy in his roles! I first thought I’d answer Thorin Oakenshield here…

…because I find that, although he looks fierce and magnificent, there is a huggable quality there as well! But in researching pictures of Richard in different roles (oh the chore!), I find that the costume that does something to my insides is Richard as John Proctor! I love him in that black coat with the collar standing up…

…or when he is seen without coat but with the linen shirt…

…or with no shirt at all (I even like the boots!)…

I also really liked him in civilian clothes as John Porter in Strike Back, especially in the first two episodes where he wore a scarf as well…

… and when his jacket came off, he then showed himself quite nicely in just jeans and a dirty, grungy t-shirt. The flimsy t-shirt shows off his physique and arms very well…

#27 Favourite Quote by a Character or RA

I don’t think I have a favourite Richard-quote, I’m not really one to remember quotes off the top of my head. Having said that, a few do spring to mind: “Look back at me”, or “You’ll not guess where I have been”, or “You don’t need Henry to explain”, or “You coming home with me?”, all of them from North and South. Yeah, I may have watched it too often…

Well, I guess I just referenced it in the previous question. There are many climaxes that I liked that hit home with me, like the ending of The Crucible or Thorin dying in The Hobbit, John Porter rescuing the journalist in Strike Back or Harry proposing to Geraldine on The Vicar of Dibley. However, the climax I have watched most, hands down, is that train station finale of North and South. I really can’t count how often I have seen that, more than anything else in my life, I think! And it never gets old!

#29 A Moment That Made You Question Whether You Could Continue Fangirling For RA.

I was on a high when I discovered Richard in North and South and soon after I became very aware him, he also did Dibley and The Impressionists. I was Richard-obsessed at the time! But then he also did Guy of Gisborne on Robin Hood and Lucas North in Spooks and those characters really couldn’t entice me! I saw bits to start with but didn’t enjoy the shows and bailed. I postponed watching them for the longest time (even longer than I postponed watching the last 4 episodes of Berlin Station). I did later see things in Guy and Lucas that I found appealing, bits of Richard shining through, perhaps, but in those years (2008-2010 or so) I thought my Richard-obsessed days might be over. He was my fave (I’d still watch every interview and read every article and Christmas message) but not more or less so than my other fave Colin Firth. Then he did Strike Back and my attention was back into full-blown force. So much so, that he overtook Firth in my attention yet again and he has remained firmly in first place ever since!

Continuing on from here and here, now part 3 of Guylty’s RA challenge! Questions 17 to 24…

#17 The Character You Love to Hate

Hmm… a love-hate relationship with one of RA’s characters… Had to think on that for a while but then I came up with Gary Fuller from Into the Storm. He’s not a baddie but the hero of the story and yet I could never warm up to him. I’m OK with Richard playing a somewhat one-dimensional character in an action flick but what really bothered me was that I literally cringed every time he spoke! His accent felt so wrong to me and I’m still not sure whether it’s because the accent was badly done or because I find it difficult to hear Richard not speak British-English (FYI, his American-English in Berlin Station doesn’t bother me nearly as much). In any case, I couldn’t bear to hear him talk, or even watch him talk for that matter. The way he moves his mouth when he speaks looks forced to me and he just never felt real. But… he did look like someone I could know in real life, and he wore glasses, and he was a vice-principal, and he is a good man; many things there I could potentially totally love about him!

So, while I find Gary cringe-worthy, I still occasionally like to go back and take a peek at him.

#18 The Top Three Things on Your To-Do List if You Suddenly Found Yourself face to face with RA

I have already interacted with the man when I expected to see him (at the stage door) and I was all jittery from just those few moments. What I would do if I bumped into him accidentally in the street, I don’t know. I wonder if I could even do anything coherent! I’m not sure I’d be any good at any sort of fleeting contact. However, maybe if I bumped into him in a less fleeting situation… Say that, for argument’s sake, I was by chance seated next to him on a plane or something. I hope that, after the first shock, I would…

Stop my cheeks from burning bright red, breathe and then say hi.

Then hopefully interact with him on a slightly more meaningful level. I’d have to mention I’m a fan, I don’t think I could hide that (I could maybe downplay it a little), but I’d hope to then ignore that and go on to talk with him about movies, books, current affairs, maybe a little personal history, and music, while we each sip our glasses of red wine.

At the end of our conversation we’d arrange to go see Muse live in concert together because we both love the band so much!

#19 A “Ship” in the Fandom You Can’t Stand (canon or non-canon; of characters or RP)

You know what? I don’t follow ships that closely. Bagginshield or RichLee or Guy & Marian or John & Margaret are the ones I am most aware of and there are others that I also come across occasionally. I just don’t do much RA fan fiction these days, I’ve never been big on Tumblr, I don’t do Reddit and I never get on C19 anymore, so I’m missing a lot of these ships now, I think. Of the four I mentioned here, I think Guy & Marian least interests me because those characters are just not that appealing to me…

#20 The Best Fanfic You’ve Ever Read involving RA or Characters

When I first fell in love with RA, I was reading all sorts of North & South fan fiction, mostly on a special website that closed (I can’t recall the name anymore – I think it may have had ‘yellow rose’ in the title? Or maybe that was a fan video site? I just don’t remember…), and I read fan fic on the C19 message board. Was obsessed, it was all I read for quite a while.

After that Richard didn’t do many roles I cared to read fan fiction for, so I pretty much quit reading then and haven’t read much since. I had an interest in Real Person Fiction (RPF) for a bit but I never found one I really liked so I gave up on that as well.

From the old N&S days I remember reading a John & Margaret one set in modern times. I think it was set around a building/project development company in the US. I don’t remember much about it except that it stuck in my mind as the one fic I had enjoyed the most. If anyone knows the one I mean, feel free to point me towards it! I have no idea where I read it, so I’m sorry I can’t link to it. I didn’t think of documenting anything in those days, I was just consuming like someone posessed.

#21 On a Scale from Secret Admirer to Panty Sniffer, How Obessed Are You with RA?

I’m not a secret admirer – at the very latest when I went to see Richard in The Crucible did the people in my life realize how much I like the man. My husband was aware from the beginning. However, I don’t wear a ‘I 💕 Richard’ t-shirt (don’t own one) and while I have some fan items (and Richard is prominently featured on my phone) my house isn’t covered in them. I am not obsessed enough to go ferreting out news actively and when new interviews come out during press tours I admit that after seeing about 5 of them, I tend to not bother with the rest of them. But I do follow certain sites and Twitter feeds for news and as soon as there is some substantial news to be found, I do tend to go into panting mode. I want to see everything he acts in but I don’t listen to his audiobooks (even though I do have a few of them). I have written some of my own, personal, Richard fan fiction that will never see the light of day but which gave me enjoyment. Oh, and I blog about him quite regularly. So, where am I on that fan obsession scale? Not in panty-sniffing mode but I certainly am in quite-preoccupied mode. Why else would I be doing this challenge? 😉

#22 The Character You’d Want as a Drinking Partner

The obvious answer would be Thorin Oakenshield, I think. Dwarves, after all, are known for their fondness of drinking. However, I think Thorin is a little too aloof to let himself go into full-out party mode. I think Claude Monet in The Impressionists knew how to party, so it would probably be him!

#23 The Character You’d Want as a Fuck Buddy

John Porter from Strike Back. He was just finding himself again and was a little obsessed with sex after going without for a while. I think he’d make a most ardent (and physically fit) lover…

#24 The Character You Find Most Relatable

That would be Harry Kennedy. I mean, I know it may be unlikely that a guy like him would fall for someone like Geraldine but I like to think that it could happen. He’s just a regular guy and I wish they could have given him more to do on The Vicar of Dibley. Even with the unlikeliness of the love story (it all went so fast too!), I still find him very relatable. It’s like I could know him in real life and share a glass of wine with him while he does my taxes.

P.S. I just adore that little headshake in the gif on the left. Richard does that in I think pretty much all his roles. For me it’s one of his signature moves and I look out for it every time I see him do something new. 🙂

The final questions to this challenge will be answered next week… off to research. 😉

Guylty has set a Richard Armitage challenge, and it’s taken me a bit of time to jump in, but here I am! Like some other fans, I’m answering these in batches instead of one by one. The questions posed by Guylty are these:

So, here goes, answers to the first 8 questions…

#1 First encounter with RA

I have blogged about this before, how once when I was sick in bed in the spring of 2006, I stuck a DVD of North and South into my computer that I had gotten from my mom months before but had just never gotten around to watching. She had never seen it either, by the way, she just figured that because I like costume drama, I might like this. In this instance she was right!

#2 The moment that made you fall in love with RA

It has got to be this moment that triggered me to find out everything I could about the man behind the John Thornton character…

I liked him from episode one, but was doing OK not actually falling in love. Then came episode four and ‘Look back at me’ and I felt myself falling down the rabbit hole after all. Really, everything about Richard in that 4th episode of North and South was sucking me in irrevocably. After watching the series (and watching it again and again) I tried to find every interview, every scrap of info I could about the man behind the character. Would I like him? Everything I was finding seemed to suggest I would and then I also saw this interview with him about N&S…

At 5 minutes in he is chuffed to be compared to Colin Firth (my then no. 1 crush) as Mr Darcy and very modest about it, at around 7.5 minutes in he mentions “Look back at me” as one of his fave scenes as well and then he has this amused knowing smile about filming the train station scenes with Daniela Denby-Ashe. Yes, I really liked him. Later that year (in 2006) The Vicar of Dibley came around, a comedy that I already very much enjoyed, and it was then that I knew this was not a passing fancy anymore. He was briefly interviewed in the extras on the Dibley DVD (The Story of Dibley) and when I saw him in stitches behind the scenes, I completely lost my heart to him forever (stills source RA Net)…

#3 Favourite piece of fan art

In my North and South craze in 2006 I was hooked on N&S fan fiction (even wrote one myself) but I didn’t document which ones I liked best. I was also hooked on fan videos which were emerging on a then quite young YouTube. I’ve already blogged about which videos I used to love in those early days of Armitage-passion:

Now, in more recent years, I don’t really follow the videos or fan fiction that closely anymore. I see those things, and other creative output such as drawings and paintings and photo edits and plushies and lovely shrines, as they happen upon my path. I truly admire them and love that the fans do this, and sometimes I even covet the art! There is no single piece made by fans that I can really single out but there is one specific piece of art I do love above all others, not made by a fan but by my mother: it’s the watercolour painting she did for me of The Crucible that is now also used as the header of this blog; I even have it as my mobile phone cover!

#4 Something you did because of RA

I travelled to London just for him to see him in The Crucible; I read certain books just because he was going to be in the movie (The Hobbit or Brain on Fire or Summer by Edith Wharton – whatever happened to that project?);I watched certain shows I otherwise wouldn’t have watched because of him (Hannibal or Spooks); I tried listening to audiobooks because of him (but yeah, failed… audiobooks just aren’t for me); and because, due to my blogging, I am a little more out there in the fandom than I used to be, I have now also even met two fellow Armitage fans in person!

#5 Favourite / Least favourite romance

My favourite romance still has to be John and Margaret in North and South...

But honourable mentions for Harry and Geraldine in The Vicar of Dibley (I mean, come on, that proposal scene was epic!)…

… and, although tragic, the story of John and Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible really touched me…

My least favourite romance is also part of my least favourite character, see next answer.

#6 Least favourite character

Percy Courtenay in Marie Lloyd. The romance went sour very quickly also due to Percy being such a despicable character. I’ve seen this only once and feel no desire whatsoever to see it ever again.

#7 Something you bought because of RA

Flight tickets to London and theatre tickets for The Crucible (see #4) but also DVD’s, Hobbit soundtracks, posters, cinema tickets. I even bought something for Richard once! I gave him typical Dutch syrup waffles in a Delft-blue pot when I met him at the stage door of The Old Vic, something like this:

I do wonder whether he himself ever ate any of them and where the pot ended up…

#8 Favourite / least favourite rivalry

Off the top of my head, the one that sticks with me most and that I think is developed very nicely is the rivalry between John Porter (Richard) and Hugh Collinson (Andrew Lincoln) in Strike Back.

Least favourite rivalry is probably Guy of Gisborne and Robin Hood (Jonas Armstrong). Yes, Richard was nice and broody in this, but I could never warm up to the series. I saw most of series one, then gave up, only watched the Richard bits and fast forwarded through the rest.

Right, that’s it for now! More to come in the hopefully not too distant future. 🙂